PS–I used some iconography from a couple of my clients (Victoria’s Secret and Burt’s Bees) in this visual map just for fun.

Click the image to enlarge.

Recently, Jen Louden asked a bunch of brave, sexy, creative women, “How you are claiming your power, trusting it, and using it to transform the world right now?” The answers they gave are beautiful and inspiring. Here’s mine:

When so much in the world hurts, crushes, overwhelms and swallows us whole, I vow to feel anyway.

To open my heart, anyway.

It is the boldest, most radical act a person can do. Always has been, always will be.

I vow to feel the sky, and your tender tears, with my fingertips.

To know the rhythm of the ocean in my bones.

To reflect moonlight in my upturned face.

To wiggle my toes in rich warm sun-kissed dirt.

To bury my nose in your pungent stink and stay there forever.

To throw my head back in deep throated delirious laughter.

To take in the pain of the world and not shun it.

To look fear in the eye and smile back with radiance.

My heart is big enough for all of this and more.

I promise to be reverent,
untamed,
kind,
beautiful,
wild,
proud,
unbridled,
wise,
childlike,
passionate,
peaceful,
generous,
and wanton.

And to feel anyway, even when the world is crashing down around me. I promise you.

Take my hand. Let me show you how to feel anyway too.

It’s a risk. I know. Only the bravest can swim in tumultuous seas. Only a boat built from the strongest wood will survive. A sexton that’s true.

We’ll navigate by the stars. They never lie. Steer steady toward a tsunami of bliss, as vast and limitless as the horizon. It’s there shimmering for us under the bright sun.

I will illuminate your inner territory. You will pry my heart open wider and wider. A blood oath between us. Fuller and farther together.

Come. Be with me. Let me throw my arms around your neck and pull your body close.
I will delight you,
entice you,
tickle you,
torture you,
tease you,
exasperate you,
enthrall you,
bewilder you,
enrapture you,
mesmerize you
and love you.

Claim what you desire. It’s right here. Now. Breathing, pulsing next to you.

Like a whisper. Like the brush of a kiss, a soft exhale against your cheek.

This. Now.

A moment so real it crushes insignificance with its weight.

Open me like a living poem. I dare you.

Click here to download a copy of this beautiful collection of 47 essays, poems, photographs and videos. (no cost and no sign up required, it’s purely a gift.)

The arc of justice bends because people are tugging at it.

A couple of weeks ago, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and several other leaders from the Atlanta community gathered at The Friends School for An Inter-generational Dialogue on Human Rights as part of the school’s 25th anniversary. I had the pleasure of visually mapping the candid conversation.

Click the image to view an enlarged version.

The big question of the evening was how do you build a culture and a community that works for everyone? Mayor Reed made some powerful points when he spoke about the people who are being left behind—many of who grew up in poverty and didn’t receive a good education.

Poor people are needed to do well because we are facing external forces we haven’t had to deal with before, namely the growing nations of China and India. The US business model is no longer working because we can’t afford to carry that much wasted human potential.

Jerry Gonzalez, director of GALEO, an organization focused on Latino rights, made the point that half of the labor force in agriculture are undocumented workers. Our agricultural economy would collapse if we decided we didn’t want these workers.

Toward the end, they focused on the children and how we can help prepare them to deal with diversity by:

• Taking them to vote
• Learning a foreign language
• Understanding our place in the world
• Knowing that it’s okay to be different
• Being an ally for those in need
• And most importantly…be kind.

You all know how much I hate left-brained biz planning: Dense strategic plans. Bar charts. Power points. Spreadsheets. Gah!

Well, I’m not alone. Jennifer Lee just wrote a book that helps us creative types do business planning in a way that works for us by utilizing our right-brained creativity. And she gives us permission to use sparkles, pink markers, pictures of sunsets, and anything our hearts desire to make our business run.

To celebrate the launch of her new book The Right-Brain Business Plan: A Creative, Visual Map for Success, Jennifer Lee has gathered an amazing line-up of leading creative entrepreneurs like uber-coach Andrea J. Lee, philosopher diva Danielle LaPorte, travel-hacking world gadfly Chris Guillibeau, super connector and friend Pam Slim and my buddy the Goddess Leonie Allan (and me!!!) who will share their insider tips and tools for running a successful business with joy, ease, and creativity.

You can watch my video conversation with Jenn on Tuesday, March 1st at 10am PST. Sign up here.

To give you a little taste of what Jenn’s about, we did an interview the other day for my blog.

What do you mean when you say right-brain business plan?

Typically business plans are boring, lengthy, written documents and financial reports that get placed in a binder and never looked at again. A Right-Brain Business Plan, on the other hand, is a visual, creative and fun work of art that provides constant inspiration and guidance.

We start with the right-brain creativity first and then we bring in the left-brain afterward to help organize the action steps and make things real. The Right-Brain Business Plan has the same basic building blocks as a traditional plan, but because we approach the planning through pictures, colors, emotion, and intuition, it’s business planning for the rest of us. Some creative formats include a leather cuff bracelet, a paper plate mobile, and a plan in a paint bucket decorated with a feather boa.

How can we help to take away some of the intimidation about doing this kind of planning for people who think they can’t do it because they don’t know how to draw?

A lot of Right-Brain Business Plans are made using collage so you don’t have to draw at all. You can just cut and paste images from magazines to create a visual plan that inspires you. I’d also like to emphasize that you don’t need to know how to draw to make a visual plan. Stick figures and chicken scratch work just fine! The plan doesn’t need to be an artistic masterpiece. Instead focus on creating something that is meaningful to you.

When I do my planning I look holistically at everything my business needs as well as the stuff I need to do to feed my creative soul. So my mind maps include things like: Set aside time for playing with paints. Go ice skating. Spend time with my High Priestess.What are some of the things that you include in your planning that someone might not necessarily think to include in their plan?

Love the ones you listed. Mine are:

• Practice self-care Fridays.
• Participate in my bi-weekly Nurture Huddle calls.
• Make time for yoga and art.
• Enjoy time in nature.
• Hang out with my husband and our dog.

Some of those things I just mentioned that feed my creative juice are the hardest ones to do—to actually take the time to do them—because it feels like there’s so much that needs to get done in my business. Any tips for that?

Yes, it can be challenging to juggle it all. One of the best things to do is to publicly state your commitments. It helps those around you know how to support you and it helps give you accountability.

A lot of people are aware of my self-care Fridays because I talk and blog about it. They know that I don’t do scheduled meetings on Fridays and they respect that.

Having an accountability buddy is also a great idea. When my friend Kate Prentiss (who illustrated my book) used to live near me, we would go to yoga class together pretty regularly. It’s harder for me to go on my own now.

Having something regularly scheduled in your calendar is also helpful. So, I know every other Wednesday at 7pm I’m going to be on a call with my Nurture Huddle.

What are some of your favorite planning tools you like to use, you know like markers, stickies, etc?

Definitely colorful stickies and the shapes are great, too, I like the flowers. When I’m doing detailed planning and mind-maps, I like to use Staedtler triplus fineliners (the set in the portable carrying case/stand rocks). I love Levenger’s Oasis Concept Pad for mind-mapping in the center with either markers or on stickies that I can move around. I also like using my label maker (when I’m feeling anal) to organize tabs in my notebook and folders.

What are three essential things you can’t live without in your office?

My MacBook, my giant wall calendar with sticky notes, my Levenger Circa notebooks.

Do you use visual touchstones? What’s your current touchstone?

Yes, I have many visual touchstones. I have my current Right-Brain Business Plan hanging on a bulletin board in my office, I have an easel with my collaged values cards on my desk, and I have my Unfolding Your Life Vision book to remind me of my personal goals.

My latest touchstone is my free downloadable Right-Brain Badge of Honor poster that hangs above my computer and reminds me that me and my creative work matter.

Sharpies or Mr. Sketch?

Mr. Sketch – they just smell so yummy! Well, Sharpies smell good, too, but they get me a little too high .

Julie, we saw the final cut of the video today and it is absolutely beautiful. We have a pretty large crew (for us) at the sr4 offices this week getting ready for the meetings next week, and people kept hearing about the video and coming into the conference room to see it. Each time we showed it for someone new, everyone who had already seen it watched it again. I’m thinking we’re going to want to do this again somewhere down the line, and I can’t imagine doing it without you. If you have already decided that you NEVER want to do that again, please let me know so I can let myself down easily.
–Bill Seyle, founding partner at sr4 Partners in Chicago

They love me in Chicago.

A couple of weeks ago I was in Chicago. In a chilly room. In an old brick building converted into a loft studio used for filming.

With me were 4-5 guys who were part of a film crew including Paul Kotkovich, cameraman and Bill Seyle, creative director.

We had come together to film a 7-minute video similar to the RSA Animate videos that are all the rage right now.

How it all started.

Back in November I was contacted about this project. It was for a client I had done some large-scale, live visual content capture for a month earlier.

Sometime in mid-December I received the script… well, parts 1 and 2 of a 3-part script. I spent a day concepting the illustrations that would best show the storyline and drawing them in sequence while taking photos of each segment so my client would have some idea of how the video would go.

Revisions were made to the script. Revisions were made to the drawings. The last part of the script arrived the week between Christmas and New Years. I charged “double holiday overtime” for having to work during that week.

Finally it seemed we were all happy. The producer/videographer and I had a very short time frame in January in which our schedules overlapped for the filming. Two days in fact.

Eleven snowplows for a whole city.

Then the snow/ice storm hit Atlanta. I knew I’d be grounded for a week and wouldn’t be able to make it to Chicago. We have 11 snow plows total here. The last time I was at O’Hare, I counted at least 30 standing by just to plow the runways. I had a fun time explaining to my Chicago crew that yes, indeed, five inches of snow can shut a Southern city down.

When I finally got to Chicago a week later, Patrick, the producer/videographer who I had been working with solely for three months, was in Buenos Aires where “the weather doesn’t suck. Nor the steak or the wine” working with another client.

He left me in good hands with his colleague Paul. Neither one of us had done this kind of work before so we would learn together.

We were going to do several takes, the whole way through all of the illustrations and accompanying text and take the best one.

I had thought that we would do several takes and they could splice a good part from Take 1 with a good part from Take 3 and another part from Take 2 like they do in the movies. But no, we had to do it clean all the way through from start to finish. Um, no pressure.

The best leaves ever.

We did a test run of a few of the initial images. The video started with an oak tree and two falling leaves.

Because they would be laying an audio over it later we were able to talk while I was doing my thing.

We figured out it was helpful for me to give cues about what I was going to do next so Paul would know where to focus and zoom and move the shot. I could also slow down when I needed to think about the next thing or when we had to move the camera because that could be edited out.

After a few minutes we had the process down and decided to go for the real thing.

The first time all the way through which we called our Take 2 was perfect. It took about 30 minutes as best I could tell.

Feeling like we had a good one in the bag, we stopped for lunch.

At the start of Take 3 I felt a little out of sorts. While drawing the leaves I said, I think I forgot how to draw leaves. Two of the crew responded right away, “Those are the best leaves I’ve ever seen. Those are Oak Park quality leaves.” Ah, managing the talent are we?

We got three quarters of the way through Take 3–including this incredibly long, excruciating-to-write segment of text that Bill reads to me while I write after which he exhales because he’s nervous for me–and realized we had skipped a sequence.

Crap. Can’t use Take 3.

Well at least we had Take 2. That is until Bill pointed out one word was wrong in the vision statement. I wrote “transform” instead of “improve.” A big difference to this client’s mission.

Realizing we didn’t have a single clean take, I push back my plane. Patrick texts from Buenos Aires: “How’d it go?”

We’re still here I text back. “You’re going to miss your plane,” he texts, managing the situation from South America.

One more take for all the marbles.

We took our time. Everyone was focused. We talked through each segment. Finally, I got to the logo at the end and left out the little sideways triangle that was supposed to fit between two words as part of the logo for this whole project. Not just any triangle. The logo triangle.

#$%@. I forgot the triangle. I can go back and squeeze it in, I tell them. And I did. It was a little smushed but it looked fine and we were all happy and relieved.

I had a large ginger mojito at O’Hare that evening before catching my flight home.

Things I learned:

• This is a long process start to finish. At least the video I was involved with.
• This is an expensive process. Again, at least the one I was involved with (think mid-five figures).
• Like some of my colleagues who have been sharing their first time experiences of doing this kind of work—it’s tedious and not nearly as fun for me as working live.
• When I told Bill how I usually work—live and in real-time—he said, “That must be so hard.” No, it’s way easier than this.
• I’m tempermentally unsuited for the kind of work that requires lots of revisions. This would include acting, screenwriting, illustrating. I’m more of a one-take kind of girl.
• I would do it again with the right people and for the right price. The right price is probably not less than $5000.

Click the image to view an enlarged version

I’m deep into holiday hostess overdrive mode as I’m having a little cocktail soiree tonight and I wish all of you could be with me to celebrate the beauty of this quiet season.

I just wanted to let you know how incredibly grateful I am for you and for this past year I’ve had with my magic marker mojo business, but first a bit of news…..

They love me in Germany!

As an early Christmas present, I was featured in an article in the FAZ, a German daily paper based in Frankfurt that’s one of the three main newspapers in Deutschland. The article is about how graphic facilitation is changing the way we do meetings.

The link takes you to the German version but here’s a translation of the best part. (Email me if you’d like to see the whole thing.)

She doesn’t see herself and her colleagues as an artist. Art has as it’s primary target from the inner impulse of the artist. This is not happening at “Graphic Recording”. It’s more that she see herself as a kind of translator, who listen for keywords and atmospheres /spirit and try to bring all the information in an hierarchy. “We structure complexity” says Stuart, who studied politics and art and is a member of the “International Forum of Visual Practitioners”, in which around 80 persons from all over the world are organized.

It takes a village.

Back to gratitude, I have so many people I’d like to thank personally and I hesitate to name names because invariably I’ll leave someone out, but here goes:

To Julie and Brandy, my fellow magic-making colleagues, thanks for all the mutually supportive chats, brainstorms and fine dining experiences throughout the year. Julie, thanks for Big Sur. The night I stood out under the sky of a bazillion stars and saw the Milky Way again, I renewed my soul. I love you both madly.

To David, Fabeku, Chris, Lisa and Cairene, you all have been my biggest encouragers and supporters. I feel like my business is a teenager, no longer a toddler, entering a period of fun and exploration, largely because of the wisdom you’ve given and reflected back to me.

You all are running your own gorgeous, authentic endeavors and I’m beyond thrilled to be in your posse. (If you don’t know these folks yet, you should….just sayin.”)

To my wonderful clients, the individuals with their amazing ideas, who come to me for visioning and strategy sessions, you inspire me all the time. I’m so grateful that you trust me with your “baby” and that I can contribute to getting your idea out to the world. We’re gonna do amazing things next year!

To my fellow facilitators who I’ve teamed with to make some big shifts at some big organizations and companies, it’s been wonderful working with you and learning from you.

To the fabulous people at businesses and organizations who I’ve worked with this year, I’ve enjoyed it so very much and hope to strategize, brainstorm and vision with you again very soon.

And to everyone who’s hung out here with me on the blog, I appreciate you so very much. So. Very. Much.

You witnessed a couple of really challenging moments for me and responded with such amazing kindness and compassion. Your care kept me afloat and hopeful when I needed it the most.

You rejoiced with me when it was time to celebrate. But mostly you showed me that I’m doing good work in the world and it’s being noticed. Slowly, deliberately, creatively, I’m building my little world in my own way and leaving some colorful breadcrumbs for my fellow travelers. I’m so glad you’re with me.

May all your starry dreams come true.

So during this time of year when the nights are longer than the days, the fields lay fallow and the stars are tucked into place in the sky, I wish you the deepest of dreams for all those bright ideas of yours. And know that you always have someone who believes in you.

Peace and prosperity for you and yours in the coming year. And always love. Love. Love. Love.

As my business is growing I’m implementing systems, structures and processes to support me and my clients. That’s a very unsexy sentence but hang in here for a minute. It’s all about showing my clients the love which is very sexy.
Click the image to view an enlarged version.

Creative people need structure to contain our ideas and energy.

If you’re a creative person you run your life and business with a certain amount of freedom. Some of the ways this looks like in my business:

I can’t stand to do the same thing day after day. A 9-5 office job is my idea of hell. My days have to be structured a little different from one to the next or I get bored and unmotivated quickly, so my days fall roughly into these categories:

• On site working with my clients.
• At home working remotely with my clients.
• Traveling for work.
• Recovering from traveling for work.
• Working on my business and all its color-coded parts.

Along with the freedom of ever-changing days I need some structure otherwise I’d have no focus. The goal of the systems is to liberate more time in my schedule to create. Because having creative time is the essential ingredient to making the stuff that makes the money.

Big radiant orange love.

Where I’m focusing with my systems is how welll I am taking care of my clients as they travel through my business. Are they feeling loved and supported by Making Ideas Visible? Are they getting the white limo treatment?

So I (surprise, surprise) visually mapped the route(s) my clients take through my business, looking at all the touchpoints they encounter, seeing if there are any gaps where they might fall through the cracks. And making sure they feel the love. The big radiant orange love of Making Ideas Visible.

One size doesn’t fit all.

I essentially have three kinds of clients:

• The people within businesses and organizations who hire me and the facilitators I team with.
• The individuals who come to me for coaching/visioning/mapping.
• A looser group of people I’m networking with who are potential collaborators.

My friend, the brilliant Cairene, advised me to map out the system for one of these groups. Once that system was clear I could adapt and tweak it for the two other kinds of clients.

I started with my individual clients. On a giant piece of paper I mapped out what the relationship looked like now:

Where they are connecting with me. Where I reach out to them. And places where I could potentially connect.

Then I put myself in the shoes (or mouse) of a new client and listed the sequence of how they travel through my business starting with the Home page which currently has no way of welcoming them whatsoever.

I found places where I could add in support with follow-up communication. Show some love by sending a card to them in the mail after our session. And ways to stay in touch and even do some additional selling.

Once I identified the things that were missing or could be improved I came up with an action list. Several of the changes were easy to make. Others are bigger chunks that will take a little doing like creating a special hidden page and a beautiful card to be mailed.

Next I’ll plug my other two kinds of clients into this system and adjust it for them.

You can DIY.

I want you to see this so you could try it for your own clients. Do your own mindmap. It doesn’t have to be slick or beautiful to be effective. You’ll notice that I’ve got a bunch of arrows going all over the place because I kept thinking of things later and adding them in. It still works fine.

You can also do this by writing your steps on sticky notes which can be rearranged.

Oh and just a heads up, in mid-December I’m going to lead a teleclass that will use a mind mapping process to put closure on the year. A way of celebrating the successes and putting closure on the ideas and possibilities that didn’t happen so we’ll be ready to move forward into the new year. I’ll have the details up soon.

What is a Chief Listening Officer and does your company need one or do you need to be one (even if you’re a solo-preneur or small company)? I might have to start using that title because when I’m doing my work in a room with ideas and emotions flowing, I am the active listener in the room.

Why is listening the new buzz word anyway?

This morning at the International Coaching Federation (ICF) conference, Jeffrey Hayzlett gave an amazing keynote address about the role of listening in companies. You may know him as the marketing guy who turned Kodak around when they went from selling $15 billion dollars worth of film to $200,000 in a few short years.

Click the image to view an enlarged version.

All of a sudden when the digital world arrived, that company who was known for creating generations of “Kodak moments” suddenly found themselves wondering if the “body was still alive.”

Jeffrey’s talk was about how Kodak had to get back into what they really do.

Think about this–they create the only product that people would save from a burning building. Wouldn’t you love to have that kind of value attacted to what you do?

Their brand is about emotional technology. So tapping into the trust they had created over the years was key to their turnaround.

Twittering in 140 countries.

Being a listening company, social media is a huge part of their effort. They are on Twitter in 140 countries (and you think you’re overwhelmed by your Twitter stream) and have Facebook pages all around the world so they needed someone(s) to listen to what’s happening in those conversations. And they want those to be actual conversations.

For Kodak’s new waterproof camera (it really is–he poured a whole glass of water on it!) they croudsourced the name. The camera did $400 million dollars in sales with NO advertising.

What’s the cost of ignoring listening?

So listening is about building hearts and minds. Tending to your tribe. Creating brand ambassadors. And you can do that no matter what size your company is. I try to do that with mine.

And I’m not writing all this just because Jeffrey promised me a book. But we’ll see how well he does on meeting my condition of satisfaction. Ahem…..

This week Mayor Kasim Reed is rolling out his initiative to create a more sustainable Atlanta. He wants to be in the top 10 cities by 2012. Currently Atlanta is #19. So clearly there is a lot of work to do.

The wisdom is in the room.

Part of the work started two weeks ago when the organization Sustainable Atlanta brought together 150 of the city’s brightest leaders to envision what sustainability looks like for Atlanta.

We had a World Cafe style meeting, which I love. Small tables covered with white butcher paper consume the room and people sit in groups of four or five and have deep, engaging conversations. Then they switch tables and cross-pollinate their ideas.

This kind of meeting creates an atmosphere for deep conversations. There’s always tons of energy and creativity in the room. Ideas and concepts get drawn on the table cloths. New alliances are forged. It almost always produces a great result because one of the premises of the World Cafe is that the wisdom is in the room you just need to tap into it.

I captured all this in two large murals which are on display at city hall this week. Part two of the conversation is supposed to take place in a month or so.

An example of using visual maps in a report.

And if you’re a policy wonk type, you can read the report on Atlanta’s sustainability initiative here. My murals are in there as well.

Click on the image to view an enlarged version.

Click on the image to view an enlarged version.

Two weeks ago I was in Chicago for work. It was a sweet gig. About three hours of visually mapping the Keith Ferrazzi’s keynote (he of Never Eat Alone fame) and a small bit of a digital storytelling workshop.

There was the set-up part: super easy because the folks who hired me were big-time-do-this-kind-of-thing-all-the-time and they had everything covered. I just had to ask them to raise the easels up by about six inches so I wouldn’t have to do squats all day.

If these walls could talk.

The setting for the gig was gorgeous—the old Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, now the Grand Geneva. And I was back in Chicago on a perfect Indian summer day.

I did my thing for three hours. They loved it. And I was done. I spent the rest of the afternoon taking a little hike and sitting by the pool in the sun catching up on some reading. Nice huh?

Believe me, not all my jobs are this cushy. There was the time in DC at the Accenture conference when I did seven murals in one day—more than eight hours solid of listening to every word that was said, visualizing the ideas and organizing them into something that will make sense when people see it later.

My work might not look like its physically intense but it is. Tons of brainpower. Standing up all day. Writing arm over my head a lot of the time. It is athletic in its own way.

That evening I went to my hotel room, put on my swimsuit with the intention of doing a few laps in the pool, propped myself up in bed to check a few emails and didn’t move for the next two hours. I was catatonic at the Ritz.

I finally wandered down to the restaurant in a daze to have a bowl of soup and force some nourishment into my body so my brain might have a chance of working again.

Gigs that are sweet and easy? I’ll take them gratefully.

The cherry on top.

Because there weren’t any shuttles that went from the airport to the Grand Geneva, my client arranged for a car service to drive me. I rode up in the late afternoon, in the back of a town car, reading the Trib which was waiting for me on the seat along with bottles of water. Enjoying the scenery as we got further away from the city and into the farmland of Wisconsin.

The ride home was even better.

Waiting for my town car to show up at the hotel, the bell hops were on alert.

“Your car is here. It’s the white limo.”

I don’t think that’s my car, I said. But sure enough it was. A gorgeous white stretch limo with black leather seats and a groovy bar. I slid into that baby, and wow.

The driver and I started chatting. He wished he had known earlier in the day this was his job because he would have come up early to play a few rounds of golf. I mentioned that I hadn’t had time to see the lake.

“Are you in a hurry? I won’t charge you for it.”

He spun me through town and along the lake while the sun was going down. We toured the town. I felt like a visiting dignitary from behind my sunglasses.

Then he steered toward home (I was staying with family in the suburbs of Chicago where I grew up), rolled up the glass that separated us saying he’d give me some peace and took the scenic route home.

We rode through the rolling countryside of southern Wisconsin. Through little lake towns. Past barns that have stood for generations and farmers markets with their fall harvest. It was unspeakably beautiful.

I put my feet up on the opposite seat. Stretched out in that stretch limo. Soaked in the pride I felt from delivering another fine job. Played all my favorite songs. And most of all let my mind run away with thoughts of special stuff—wonderful, magical things that have already happened in my life and other stuff that I want to make happen or have come to me. It was like a two-hour dreamscape.

The luxury of having that kind of time not to do…..anything…..but daydream? A gift. A totally unexpected gift.

And being driven after a gig? I posted to Facebook that after this I’m going to want to be driven everywhere. I could seriously get used to that.

I was imagining putting that clause into my contract as a rider. No more scary, nasty cabs for me. Only limos and town cars.

The backseat is a wildly creative place.

I realized this is one of the ways that I create. It is almost always true that when I have a large expanse of mindscape in front of me, great ideas rush in. And that happened in the limo. All kinds of new ideas visited me.

Some of the conditions that made this possible:

• I had just completed some successful work. (feeling pride of accomplishment and a sense of relaxation)

• I had just done some profitable networking. (new possibilities percolating, excitement)
• I had nothing to do for two hours. (my to-do list wasn’t nagging at me)
• I wasn’t in front of my computer. (no distractions by other people’s stuff)
• I was in motion. (this is interesting because I often get great ideas when I’m traveling, like literally flying in an airplane or driving down the road)
• I felt like I was on vacation. (being in the countryside put me in a different frame of mind)

A new metaphor: the white limo.

The feeling I got from this limo ride—the specialness of it, the utter peace and relaxation, the novelty, the comfort, the privacy, the space and time to create, the letting someone else do the driving for a change—all these things I want to cultivate more of in my business.

So I’m thinking of ways to give Making Ideas Visible more of the white limo treatment because I need to spend more time in the backseat of a limo. How about you? What’s your white limo?